Not only does Big Media’s Israel fixation lead to tar-and-feather survey results like this, it makes all utterly ignorant of the wider Arab world — a point Terry Glavin brilliantly articulates:

The main reason we have been so deaf to these voices is that we haven’t been able to hear them. It’s not just because pro-democracy Arab and Iranian voices are denied the advantages of a free press. It’s the din and cacophony that has had us all obediently transfixed by the transgressions of Israel, which is one small country with roughly 80 human rights organizations and 7.4 million Jewish, Arab, Baha’i, Christian and atheist citizens.

Israelis live a besieged and troubled but democratic life of equal rights and the rule of law in an open society. Its sins are subjected to the weirdest microscopic inspections and magnified all over the world, constantly. All along, 350 million people have been detained inside the prison-farm nightmare that surrounds Israel, but if you dare draw attention to their sufferings you will be sneered at for your suspicious bias in favour of Israel, or more likely, you’ll be dismissed as a Zionist neoconservative warmonger.

Will the world like us more when Google Street View finishes mapping Israel? Yes and no.